Herman Wouters leads us to discover new ways of relating to people with profound intellectual limitations >> VIDEO
RENZO
Hi Herman. Thank you for being with us. Hermann Wouters is from Belgium, has a background in Special Education and has been working for most of his professional career with people with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. Herman, could you please briefly tell us something about you and your work?
HERMAN
At the moment I’m retired. I started my career as a caregiver in a unit of persons with intellectual disability and then I worked for about 40 years as a master in special education in a facility of persons with a profound and severe intellectual disability. There I coached, supervised, and supported the caregivers in their units of about 10 persons with intellectual disability. In the last 12 years I received also a grant to do theoretical and practical work about behavior problems and so I attended, carried out and organized a lot of lectures and masterclasses all over the world: in Europe, in the United States, in Canada, in Africa.
RENZO
Well, in your experience what are the key points for entering into relationship with a person with profound intellectual limitations, for establishing a good reciprocal communication? Although I can imagine that no person is equal to another, there may be some basic principles we have to learn.
HERMAN
Well, OK, most of the persons with intellectual disability I worked with, don’t speak: they haven’t verbal language. So, the non-verbal communication with them is very important, and as a caregiver you must focus on this level of communication. This means that in real situations you must do a very good observation of the non-verbal language: look at gestures, movements that start, sounds and variation in sounds, postures of the body, and then as a second stage you can do the interpretation of what you see. While you’re observing the movements of a person you have to interpret what is going on inside the person in that moment, what are his or her sensations, emotions, motivation. Is she or he cooperating or expressing more resistance, a strong resistance, a moderate resistance, a weak resistance. So, when you are creating a non-verbal dialogue – a little bit like a mother with a baby – you also create reciprocity and a moment of companionship, as a very important moment of social inclusion, important for us but also for persons with a profound intellectual disability.
RENZO
That is very very interesting. Could you make just an example?
HERMAN
Yes. Let’s bring the example of a dialogue with Timmy. He is an adult with a profound intellectual disability and a development mental level of about six months. I’ll show you a brief video clip, but I need to explain it a little bit before. In the scene you will see that the music therapist is first singing. You could say like a first voice, and Timmy is joining the activity with his movements. Then, a moment, the therapist stops: there is a moment of silence and Timmy starts to make sounds, which is for him quite exceptional, like he would want to say: “Hey, hey, please continue, it was pleasant, please continue the activity!”. And then the therapist is joining the activity of Timmy, you could say a little bit like the second voice. She changed her role: first it was she who was leading but now she is joining the activity of Timmy. This is a very nice moment of reciprocity that creates a feeling of companionship. But I propose to look at the video.
VIDEO
The scenes in the video: 1) The therapist sings a rhythmic song with drum accompaniment; 2) Sometimes Timmy seems to follow by doing some movements; 3) Now Timmy makes some sound, like asking to continue singing; 4) Now it is Tommy who leads the songs, and the therapist follows.
RENZO
Thanks Herman, it’s very very impressive. So, just to finish, what do you think we can and should do to make our cities, our communities fully inclusive for persons with profound intellectual disabilities?
HERMAN
Well, one of the things I would like to say is that there is a lot to do all over the world to accept persons with a profound intellectual disability as human beings with a senseful life. Even if they have a tremendous need to be cared, even if they will never be independent. They need caregivers able to communicate in a non-verbal way and able to listen to their whispering. As I said before already, moments of real companionship are a social need for everyone, for us but also for people with intellectual disability.
RENZO
Thank you. Thank you, Herman, for your very inspirational talk.